The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 1999
Robert Mundell

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Robert A. Mundell - Biographical

Since 1974, Robert Mundell (born 1932) has
been Professor of Economics at Columbia University in New York. After
studying at M.I.T. and the
London School of
Economics, he received his Ph.D. from M.I.T. in 1956, and was
the Post-Doctoral Fellow in Political Economy at the University of
Chicago in 1956-57. He taught at Stanford University and The Johns Hopkins Bologna
Center of Advanced International Studies before joining the
staff of the International Monetary Fund in 1961. From 1966 to
1971 he was a Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago
and Editor of the journal of Political Economy; and from 1965 to
1975, he was (summer) Professor of International Economics at the
Graduate
Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland.
For 1997-98 he was the AGIP Professor of Economics at the Johns
Hopkins Bologna Center of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced
International Studies.

Professor Mundell has been an adviser to a
number of international agencies and organizations including the
United Nations,
the IMF, the World Bank, the European Commission, and several governments
in Latin America and Europe, the Federal Reserve Board, the
US Treasury
and the Government
of Canada. In 1970, he was a consultant to the Monetary
Committee of the European Economic Commission, and in 1972-73 a
member of its Study Group on Economic and Monetary Union in
Europe¨. He was a member of the Bellagio-Princeton Study
Group on International Monetary Reform from 1964 to 1978, and
Chairman of the Santa Colomba Conferences on International
Monetary Reform between 1971 and 1987.

The author of numerous works and articles
on economic theory of international economics, he prepared one of
the first plans for a common currency in Europe and is known as
the father of the theory of optimum currency areas. He was a
pioneer of the theory of the monetary and fiscal policy mix, the
theory of inflation and interest and growth, the monetary
approach to the balance of payments, and the co-founder of
supply-side economics. He has also written extensively on the
history of the international monetary system.

Mundell's writings include over a hundred
articles in the scientific journals and the following books: The
International Monetary System: Conflict and Reform (1965); Man
and Economics and International Economics (1968); Monetary
Theory: Interest, Inflation and Growth in the World Economy 1971;
and co-edited A Monetary Agenda for the World Economy (1983);
Global Disequilibrium (1990); Debts, Deficits and Economic
Performance (1991); Building the New Europe (1992); Inflation and
Growth in China (1996).

Professor Mundell presented the Frank
Graham Memorial Lecture at Princeton University in 1965, the Marshall
Lectures at Cambridge University in 1974, and the Ohlin Lectures
in 1998. He was the first Rockefeller Research Professor of
International Economics at the Brookings
Institution in 1964-65, the Ford Foundation Research
Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago in 1965-66,
the Annenberg Professor of Communications at the University of Southern
California in 1980, the Repap Professor of Economics at
McGill
University in 1989-90, the Richard Fox Professor of Economics
at the University
of Pennsylvania in 1990-91, and the Agip Professor of
Economics at the Bologna Center in 1997-98. He received a
Guggenheim Prize in 1971, the Jacques Rueff Medal and Prize in
1983, the Docteur Honoris Causa from the University of Paris in
1992, an Honorary Professorship at Renmin University in China in
1995, the Distinguished Fellow Award from the American
Economic Association in 1997, and was made a fellow of the
American Academy
of Arts and Sciences in October 1998.

This autobiography/biography was written
at the time of the award and later published in the book series Les
Prix Nobel/Nobel Lectures/The Nobel Prizes. The information is sometimes updated with an addendum submitted
by the Laureate.